UDP – Railway Corridor

June 2016 – Railway Corridor

We were approached by the UDP Group to conduct rapid deployment and turn around for our aerial survey services. The area of interest was along an 8km railway corridor from the Port of Townsville, along the Port Access road before then turning off and heading towards the overpass of the Bruce Highway and Abbott Street. The area proved to be difficult to map as it is a low lying area described as a flood plane and the day prior had heavy rain, making all primary take off as well as all landing areas too wet to safely operate from. In addition, this made it difficult to layout and pick up ground control and had washed out some prepared ground control. On top of this, the primary system that was being operated had a failure of motor failure and a servo/elevon failure at different times throughout the operation. By having enough spares, backups and a diverse fleet, we were able to get back in the air again and get back on track.

The railway corridor presented some interested operational risks including high voltage power lines that ran parallel to the railway corridor, a highway with mainly heavy vehicles and very boggy soils throughout the area of interest. This risks were efficiently managed by the NQ UAV crew during the pre-flight planning and checked and verified onsite prior to the operation.

The final deliverables were:

DTM (Digital Terrain Models);

DSM (Digital Surface Models);

Seemless Orthomosaic;

All were in GDA94 and AHD to allow for easy compatibility with other similar datasets in locations around the area of interest.

These were delivered on time so that the client could calculate volume estimates of gravel to be laid along the length of the rail corridor.

Thank you for visiting us. As of November 2017 we will no longer be trading as NQ UAV and will continue as FlyFreely. Combined with this change of name is a change of direction with the company. We have made the decision to discontinue our contract drone services.

We believe that the future of drones is in your hands, and that is why we have developed FlyFreely. We want to make drone usage available to everyone through facilitating a safe, quick, and cost effective process. Basically, we want to enable drones for everyone. If this sounds like a good fit for your business, let us know! We would love to hear from you and discuss how you want to use drones in your business.

Alternatively, if you would rather get someone else in for your flights, that is OK too. We will connect you with other drone pilots on FlyFreely who are specialists in their field. You can still reach us on (07) 4402 4069 at any time, and we have made the jump to a new website: www.flyfreely.io

Thanks for all your help and support over the years. We have thoroughly enjoyed working with you and sincerely hope to continue to do so in to the future!